Copernic Desktop Search Tool - More Thoughts

In an earlier post I discussed my search for a desktop search tool in some detail, and promised that I would have a later post with some reasons why you wouldn't use Copernic (or indeed any other search tools).

This is that post.

Since the earlier post was written I have noticed that it was picked up by Copernic and added to their "blogs and user posts" page. Which is fine by me, but here are some of the potential problems of these technologies.

Firstly, if you do download your own software and install it you fear the wrath of God in the form of your systems administrator if your network policy indicates that software can only be installed by IT Support. Which is a fair enough requirement on their part - a network is a subtle and fragile thing, and the last thing it needs is you blundering all over it - so get permission from your administrators!

May I also suggest that if you download it anyway and install it, you don't then blog about it :=).

Some problems these tools cause for networks include:

• Increased Network Traffic: These tools regularly (every four days or so) go out and crawl the network directories you nominate, and index the files it finds. This increases network traffic and although the tool is fairly low-footprint on your own PC, on the network server it can cause a bit of grief (which, in a large organisation, you will not be thanked for if you bring down the server). This is particularly a problem if you have LOTS of people on your network creating similar havoc.
  
• Slower Performance: These tools work by grabbing files you work on and indexing them as you save them - that is how they pick up files you work on rather than waiting for four days. There can be a small drop in performance - but probably not noticeable - in your local PC. Copernic in particular seems to play nice with the PC in its context.
• Storage Access Networks: Oh dear - if you use Copernic and set it up to crawl through 1 gigabyte of old documents sitting on a storage access network (say, slower, older, but larger capacity, network drives mapped seamlessly to your network drives), these SAN's decide that you've opened the file (which you have) and promptly move it all back to your smaller, faster network drives that are meant for active files only. And that is a great way to see if your system administrator can physically turn purple, given the storage margins many organisations run with these days.
• I Can't Believe It's Not A Document Management System: Well, actually I can. Copernic Desktop Search Tool is a good, personal, tool for finding files quickly. It is not an EDRMS, and is not really a scalable solution to fit organisational requirements of an EDRMs. Be aware that Copernic and its peers are not intended as EDRMS solutions. By the same token, it's a lot easier and less overhead than having to profile and fill out the metadata for documents before saving them (which is what EDRMS' rely upon) - but of course the downside is that your searching abilities and strategies need to become a lot more sophisticated to find anything. And of course these days EDRMS tools are really migrating/integrating to content management systems and thus delivering your content to the web in a managed framework - again, something Copernic will never do.
  

Having said all that, I am now using it but pointing it to my local drives where most of the havoc can go away. The negatives really relate to desktop search tools in general rather than Copernic in particular, which continues to be a reliable tool as far as I am concerned.

There are probably a couple of other issues that will come to mind - but I can't think of anything more at the moment.